China's strategy in Afghanistan.

Jono said:

I would respectfully disagree.
No pain, no gain. China is now handed a golden piece of real estate on a silver plate, and given a real opportunity to showcase its meritocracy and strength in governance to the global south. What better platform to show its admirable strengths to the entire world by working with the Taliban and building up Afghanistan? well, nobody expects China can transform A-stan into another China, but at least a semblance of progress can be made? Besides, I feel that the Taliban is sincere in asking China for help, and if China sticks to development projects only, and not interfere with the political process in the country, there should be less opposition to its presence in A-stan. If China waits until all is rosy and good in its neighbour, the opportunity to help may never come. Time for China to stand up and be counted as a strong and reliable force for development and progress in contrary to the US.
If A-stan remains unstable and poor, it will remain a haven for terrorists, which simply cannot be good for Xinjiang too.
so it is in China's interest and benefit to lend a helping hand when the new regime is still groping its way in its infancy.
the Bagram Base is a useful foothold for China.
just my 2 cents of humble opinion.

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You are correct with your argument that China needs to help Afghanistan to grow out of poverty. That would be a great showcase of China as an alternative partner to work with.

About the PLAAF using Bagram Air Base. Perhaps if that were to happen. The best way I can think off is that it should only be on the official invitation by the Taliban govt. Like the case of with Russia and the Khmeimim Air Base in Syria. And that should only be a last resort. Perhaps only when there is a scenario of mass-scale foreign-sponsored terrorism that could topple the Taliban govt, and plunge Afghanistan into a terrorist hellhole ISIL state like what was attempted in Syria. Such a thing could inevitably threaten China, Pakistan, and Central Asia. Only in that case, then military intervention looks somewhat justifiable. Better for China to also get the other stakeholders involved like Pakistan and Russia. But they all need to be careful about overstaying there.

But, if Afghanistan is in no imminent danger of plunging into an ISIL state. Then its better for China to keep military options off the table. My ideal scenario would be to have the Taliban invite Chinese contractors to renovate Bagram Air Base into a civilian airport complete with a NATO atrocity museum. That would reinforce the idea that China is there to bring about positive progress. And with an added bonus of also becoming an embarrassment for those NATO imperialist powers.

Jono said:

I would respectfully disagree.
No pain, no gain. China is now handed a golden piece of real estate on a silver plate, and given a real opportunity to showcase its meritocracy and strength in governance to the global south. What better platform to show its admirable strengths to the entire world by working with the Taliban and building up Afghanistan?

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China is not a charity. If it was, it wouldn't have reached an (almost) superpower status

If Afghanistan wants investments then thats ok. Provide security and we talk

If Afghanistan wants aid then thats ok too. Ensure that the aid goes to the people and China will send it

If Afghanistan wants some quick help on infrastructure then thats ok too. Provide security and we talk

I think you get the meaning. For the Afghan leaders, security is number 1 priority. Until that happens, the only thing they can hope for is humanitarian aid from China.

I mean look at Pakistan. Pakistan is a proper state with a proper security apparatus, but it still has difficulty with Chinese investments due to sporadic terrorist attacks.

Gotta love China undercutting the US attempts to destabilise the Taliban government, plus this gesture will instil goodwill amongst the afghan population

Most useful to China's security in the short term is coordinating counterterrorism activity between Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran so that troublesome groups like the Pakistani Taliban and Baloch separatists which threaten the security of the BRI can be effectively eliminated.

PLAAF can use the new Tashkurgan airport to cover eastern Afghanistan with UAVs.

Also this article may be of interest, also covers Myanmar and NK.

Chinese media blitz on Afghanistan.

This is America's longest war, a tragedy that can be observed over 500 kilometers away in space. For the Afghan people, this has been 20 years of lies, killings, bullying, death, desolation, decline... The superpower imposed a disaster on the extremely poor and weak civilians. It lost the war, and was even unable to withdraw in dignity.

The Longest War

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Ep1: Invasion


Part 2: Human rights

KenC said:

Chinese media blitz on Afghanistan.



Ep1: Invasion

Part 2: Human rights

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Is Xinhua putting out text-to-speech videos now? L. Major, major, L. That's Indian spam level L. But hey, why expect quality from Youtube garbage.

There's useful stuff on youtube as well. Case in point, Thomas Ricks lectures on some of the problems with the quality of US Generals which led to the failures in Iraq and Afghanistan in the link below. The US Army culture is anti-creative, anti-risk, and does not punish failure. American Generals today not strategic thinkers. Ricks takes the view that the most important feature of a general is that they understand the nature of the conflict they are engaged in and challenge dogma, and US Generals are incapable of these basic features. They get promoted based on how well they can stay in the middle of the herd:


And here's another lecture I saw recently that provides another perspective on the failures of Western culture to capitalize on talent (which would also affect their military culture). This was a talk by Malcolm Gladwell that he gave at Microsoft. The whole video is worth a watch, but around 18 minutes in, he specifically talks about Western versus Eastern culture, and the differences in attitude of kids learning math at school. It blew my mind how this whole thing goes back to the influence of rice-farming practices in the East versus wheat farming in the West.

Overbom said:

China is not a charity. If it was, it wouldn't have reached an (almost) superpower status

If Afghanistan wants investments then thats ok. Provide security and we talk

If Afghanistan wants aid then thats ok too. Ensure that the aid goes to the people and China will send it

If Afghanistan wants some quick help on infrastructure then thats ok too. Provide security and we talk

I think you get the meaning. For the Afghan leaders, security is number 1 priority. Until that happens, the only thing they can hope for is humanitarian aid from China.

I mean look at Pakistan. Pakistan is a proper state with a proper security apparatus, but it still has difficulty with Chinese investments due to sporadic terrorist attacks.

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It is not gonna be free of charge nor charity as you put it but a real lithum market is the idea behind all of this.

As for the security part it doesn't have to be Bagram air base but China has to bring over some troops and IEA will embed some of her own troops to these chinese troops to give it a bulk and security assistance. But however there are always gonna be nefarious groups who would want to target it example like the recently defeated NRF or ISKP or even BLAAF since IEA is cleaning them off as late.

There is gonna be some risks here and there but I do think the security support IEA will provide to the chinese works and troops will be much more aggressive and serious because it wants to create a huge lithum market and other minerals plus offering various construction projects to China and Turkey (they have also expressed interest in the construction arena) but IEA is more closer to China diplomatically as it stands and logistically closer.

Aside from the risks which is managable it is not so bad again afterall. I don't think China will cower away from this the benefits outweigh the thorny issues.

I do believe it will happen perhaps not this year but after 1-2 years.. IEA will be ready and throw everything at the security issues because this is a sole interest of IEA hence they will take the right measures to protect their interests.

I would probably say the minerals project is the biggest state interest in IEA right now. It is there main livelihood and want to build the country on that.

Mohsin77 said:

There's useful stuff on youtube as well. Case in point, Thomas Ricks lectures on some of the problems with the quality of US Generals which led to the failures in Iraq and Afghanistan in the link below. The US Army culture is anti-creative, anti-risk, and does not punish failure. American Generals today not strategic thinkers. Ricks takes the view that the most important feature of a general is that they understand the nature of the conflict they are engaged in and challenge dogma, and US Generals are incapable of these basic features. They get promoted based on how well they can stay in the middle of the herd:

And here's another lecture I saw recently that provides another perspective on the failures of Western culture to capitalize on talent (which would also affect their military culture). This was a talk by Malcolm Gladwell that he gave at Microsoft. The whole video is worth a watch, but around 18 minutes in, he specifically talks about Western versus Eastern culture, and the differences in attitude of kids learning math at school. It blew my mind how this whole thing goes back to the influence of rice-farming practices in the East versus wheat farming in the West.

Click to expand...

I highly suggest that you take the time to either read this researcher's book (Command Culture) because his main thesis pretty much echoed most of the persistent theme on these videos extrapolated by Thomas Rick's (I have the book of the failure of Generalship) and Malcolm Gladwell.

I also embedded his talk and presentation on YouTube here. His book was on the U.S. Chief Of Staff defense reading list.